AHEAD OF THE CURVE – FREE FILM STREAMING WITH MJFF

In celebration of Pride month the Maine Jewish Film Festival (MJFF) and the JCA are proud to present

AHEAD OF THE CURVE (2020)

Streaming online Friday, June 24th at 9 AM – Sunday, June 26th at midnight 

At the close of Pride Month, we’re delighted to pair two provocative offerings: 

• A free virtual screening of Ahead of the Curve – a documentary exploring three decades of change in lesbian and queer movements. 
• A frank and lively follow-up conversation, pre-recorded by Bates College faculty members Erica Rand and Stephanie Pridgeon, about the film, the role of media, and the changing language and politics of sexual and gender identities.  

Please note: Let the end titles of the film roll – the conversation follows directly! 

Co-directed by Jen Rainin and producer Rivkah Beth Medow, the film tracks the trajectory of the once-groundbreaking Curve (the first magazine to put the word “lesbian” on the cover) and a cross-country tour of its founder Franco Stevens, as she struggles to keep it relevant to next generations.  

Professor Erica Rand teaches and writes on diverse topics in Queer and Trans Studies with a central focus on race. Her writing includes Barbie’s Queer Accessories, Red Nails, Black Skates, and The Ellis Island Snow Globe offers a queer anti-racist alternative tour of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.  

Her most recent book is called The Small Book of Hip Checks on Queer Gender, Race, and Writing, and she is currently having fun and writing a lot about training on an anti-heteronormative figure skating pairs team. During the dyke publishing boom in the 1990s that is the subject of this film, she wrote the sex-advice column “Ask Thighmaster: Advice with Holes” for the publication Apex, a radical queer paper produced by local dykes.  

Stephanie Pridgeon is a faculty member at Bates College and a member of Maine Jewish Film Festival board of directors.  She writes and teaches on a variety of topics related to Jewish, Latin American, and Latinx film and media. Her most recent publication compares Jewish and Cuban-American coming-out narratives in the popular television series Transparent and One Day at a Time.   

The screening is free but you’ll need to reserve tickets to access the film.  

MORE INFO & FREE TICKETS VIA MJFF https://2022mjffvirtual.eventive.org/welcome